Renewing our aging infrastructure
During his radio broadcast on December 6, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama promised to create the largest public works construction program since the inception of the interstate highway system more than a half century ago. This ambitious program will be a pivotal part of the economic recovery program he hopes to fashion with Congress immediately after being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009.
Mr. Obama went on to say he would invest record amounts of money in the vast infrastructure program, which would include highways, bridges, sewer systems, mass transit, electrical grids, and work on schools, dams and other public utilities. The green-oriented jobs generated would result in the creation of greater energy efficiencies while minimizing negative environmental impacts.
It is critical that an investment of this magnitude truly reflects the imperatives of twenty-first century requirements and beyond. Infrastructure programs must be performance-based to ensure that they are meeting our functional needs of minimizing net congestion while maximizing long-term asset preservation, rather than pandering to parochial political interests. Investments in higher quality engineering will also lessen long-term maintenance requirements and associated costs.
Green highways will not only require more eco-friendly and recycled asphalts, but will also have to incorporate an engineering design that efficiently manages runoff including heavy metals, inorganic salts, aromatic hydrocarbons, and suspended solids that accumulate on the road surface as a result of regular highway operation and maintenance activities, such as deicing and herbicide applications. This might include porous pavement shoulders linked to bioretention swales that will reduce pollutants from surface runoff as well as agronomically-adapted or environmentally insensitive buffer areas. The same thinking must go into building and upgrading our bridge system.
While economic recovery is the prime motivation behind this ambitious program to renew our nation's aging infrastructure, we must ensure that the investment of taxpayer dollars provides us with the practical means to improve our daily mobility and commercial efficiency while preserving the environment for generations to come.
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